I wish I knew how this marker ended up in an junk store in a Chicago suburb. It was the perfect store, junk everywhere, even hanging from the rafters. I found this buried in a corner and as soon as I saw it I knew it was real. The cross was cut from sheet metal, painted, and nailed to a wooden cross at one time, which was probably destroyed. My guess is that after the war bodies were moved to large formal cemeteries with standard markers. The original markers were gathered up and used for scrap and destroyed, or just buried. I remember seeing one photo of a huge pile of markers, some were metal, some wood. Someone thought it would make a great souvenir and brought it home. After some time it ended up in the junk store. The owner said he had it in the store for six or seven years. I did some research on the soldier, and found that his name is on one of eighteen bronze tablets at St. Laurentius Catholic Church, along with the names of others from Kleinostheim who were killed in action. His name was Peter Georg Eisert, rank, Obergefreiter, and was born on 1/20/1918 in Kleinostheim. The marker has the wrong birthdate, and lists it as 1/20/1912. He was killed in action on 4/5/1944, somewhere on the Eastern front in the Soviet Union, at the age of 26. A sad reminder of the horrors of war.